Wilhelmina was in my hand as my knee hit the floor and I fell into a large, central room where figures came at me from all sides. I glimpsed one huge figure, stripped to the waist, off to the side, but I hadn't time to take inventory. Cursing the damn stone, I let go a fusillade of shots, scattering them, and I heard cries of pain and alarm as I saw three figures go down. The room was lighted by the flickering glow of wall torches and filled with moving shadows and nearly dark areas. As the others scattered, I whirled to head for the doorway, this time stepping over the stone. When I reached the outside, I saw that people had rum out of various side exits and were rushing at me. I fired again and saw two more go down. A shot pinged off the stone an inch from my head and I emptied Wilhelmina and ran back into the temple, again leaping over the moveable stone.
Men were coming toward me inside while I heard the rest rushing in through the doorway. I decided against using Hugo. There was a good chance that, as had often happened, he'd go unnoticed and be of more use later. Right now, he'd just remove a few and the remainder might still get me. Their people didn't seem afraid of being killed — they were coming in from all sides.
I streaked for the far wall as two shots rang out, whizzing past my ear and sounding like cannons in the cavernous interior of the temple. I dived, hit the floor and came up running again. Three men came in to cut me off and I bowled into them, feeling my blows striking flesh and bone. Two of them went down. The third clasped arms around my left leg and I kicked out hard with my right I felt my foot smash into his face and the arms let go. I changed course and tried for the other side of the big room.
Another shot rang out This one creased my forehead, and I felt the sharp pain of it as it seared the skin just below the hairline. I ducked, stumbled and fell as another shot crossed over me. I rolled over to avoid the third shot I was sure would follow. It did and so did a huge Japanese. I saw his bulk fill the space above me. The sonofabitch had a positive talent for getting to me when I was off my feet.
I rolled over to get away from him but he brought both arms down, hands held together, like a sledgehammer. The blow caught me between the shoulder blades with tremendous force and I spread-eagled against the floor. His foot followed, catching me alongside the temple, and I felt myself skitter two feet sideways. More hands had come up to rain blows on me. A sharp blow from something metal, probably a gun barrel, caught me on the top of the head. I saw purple flashes and then blackness closed down.
It could have been an eternity, or only five minutes, but I began to slowly struggle out of the blackness. As I started to come around, I felt the soft touch of a wet rag on my face, patting my eyes, being drawn across my forehead, then my cheeks. That's damn nice of them, I thought fuzzily. When I got my eyes to open I saw that they weren't being gentle but merely wiping away my makeup. An old, one-armed woman was doing the rubbing with a wet cloth.
I felt my arms tied around behind my back at the wrists. My ankles were also tied together, and I was propped up against a wall. Behind the old woman I saw faces and shapes as I started to focus. The eye picks out the biggest things first; in this case the huge form of Carlsbad's Japanese, his flesh in folds over his tremendous chest and stomach, truly a mountain of a man. Beside him, looking thinner than he actually was, stood a gray-haired man with intense blue eyes and next to him Rita Kenmore, now in black slacks and a yellow jersey top. I looked at Carlsbad. At least I knew he was really here.
One of the men standing behind Rita was holding Wilhelmina in his hand. I could feel Hugo still safely strapped to my forearm. The other people in the temple gathered in a semicircle to stare at me. Most of them were oriental but not all, and there was something strange about the whole lot of them. Mostly men, the group contained some women, and most had lined, old faces though there was a sprinkling of younger, well-built males. But all of them had a haunted expression in their eyes, an expression of inner pain. A number of them were crippled and deformed. The old woman finished wiping away my makeup and rose to step back.
Beyond the onlookers I saw corridors leading away from the main part of the temple. Against the far wall rows of candles burned at a kind of altar, a long, flat slab of rock with a peculiar sculpture hanging behind it — a sculpture of twisted, blackened metal and pieces of bone. Carlsbad's voice brought my attention back to him.
"This is the man who almost prevented your getting away with Rita?" he was saying to the large Japanese. The wrestler nodded.
"I'm impressed by your discovery of our little nest," Carlsbad said to me. "How did you manage that?"
"Clean living," I said and the Japanese started to reach one huge hand down to me.
Carlsbad stopped him. "No, let him alone. He can do us no harm. In fact, we can keep him here. He may be of value eventually."
The giant Japanese straightened up but his eyes, small in the folds of his huge head, glittered. He said nothing and I wondered if he was as subservient as Carlsbad seemed to think.
"Where is X–V77?" I asked Carlsbad.
"Here and quite safe, for the moment," the bacteriologist answered. I glanced at Rita and tried to read what was behind those china-blue eyes. I thought I saw uncertainty and I turned back to Carlsbad.
"You've already killed four men over this," I said and saw Rita quickly glance at him. Now I knew what I had seen in her eyes. Surprise, shock. Carlsbad directed his words to me, but he was answering her questioning look.
"A small price to pay to achieve what must be achieved."
"And what's that?" I questioned.
'To make the world's leaders stop their misuse of science," Carlsbad said.
He gestured to those standing by. "Everyone here is a victim of the immorality of present-day science and politics. Every individual here is a victim of one or another scientific advance which, by its use, is really injuring mankind."
"For instance?" I asked. "That big oaf looks healthy."
"Mr, Kiyishi, like many of the others, was a child in Hiroshima at the time of the bombing," Carlsbad explained. "He is sterile, unable to produce a child. Some of my people here are workmen, crippled externally or internally by constant exposure to radioactivity in the plants in which they worked. Some were soldiers, permanently disabled by exposure to nerve gases. Others were fishermen whose stomachs are largely gone due to eating fish contaminated by insecticides.
"There are fifteen families here, fifteen out of two hundred killed in the mountains of the Caucasus when a Russian plane accidentally dropped a container of bacteriological viruses. The incident was kept completely silent. In America, thousands of sheep were killed in a similar accident, sheep which could easily have been people."
As I listened to him, I realized with a chilling horror that Carlsbad had gone far beyond the role of a protesting man of science. He was setting up a kind of elite of the damned, with what sounded like political and moral overtones.
"I think we should kill him at once," said the big Japanese, gesturing at me, little eyes hard as stones.
"No," Carlsbad said sharply. "He is obviously a top agent. He may be able to help us in time, willingly or unwillingly."
Rita was still there, but her eyes were on the floor. I knew that if I had a chance to get out of here, it would depend on one slim girl and one slim stiletto. Carlsbad bad turned to his niece and put a hand on her arm.
"We are going now," he said. "You'll be safe here till we return. Your room is not the Grand Hotel but it will suffice. Time has passed without anything having been done by the American government, or any of the others. We are beginning the most critical phase of our mission now, my dear. But it will be worth it one day."